Plano Airconditioning and Heating Company talks about summer heat.

Plano Airconditioning and Heating Company talks about summer heat. In 2007 Steve Lauten, President of Total Air and Heat in Plano gave the following address to an industry convention.

The Summer that Never Showed Up!

So here we are about to celebrate Labor Day and I am asking will it ever get really hot this summer?  To be honest….. I doubt we are going to see many more days above 100.  So what do we do now?  Get ready for winter?

My answer is you have to look for all of the opportunity on each call you run.  Whether it’s a service or sales call, you must go slow enough to completely assess the needs of that customer.  It might be a Commercial customer that has 20 year old package rooftops and a duct system more snarled that DFW rush hour traffic or a residential system on a home that’s only 2 years old.  Each of these customers has a reason for you to be there and our job is to completely diagnose what the customer needs.  I am going to assume all of you have qualified people to get the job done.  My focus is going to be what is necessary to give a complete diagnosis.

Digital Refrigeration Gauge

I believe digital refrigeration gauges have made the traditional analog gauge obsolete in many ways for several reasons:

  1. Accuracy-The better digital gauges automatically zero out every time you turn them on.  You can’t properly diagnose what’s going on without accurate readings.
  2. Superheat and Sub cooling-The newer digital gauges have the ability to record suction and liquid temperatures and give you the superheat and sub cooling.  In addition they store multiple pressure temperature charts in the gauges!
  3. Portable printer that allows you to record all of your readings.
  4. The higher end digital gauge sets allow you to store you readings and input them into software that can give you total system capacity.

Duct Leakage Testing

The most overlooked part of HVAC systems is the ductwork in my opinion. Duct leakage exists in most systems, including commercial.  The average residential system is losing 30% of its capacity to air leakage! 

Most commercial systems have significant leakage.  I will never forget the commercial job I was starting up around 1985.  This was a typical built up mechanical room on the top floor of the office building.  The system was using chilled water and vane axial fans.  I noticed in the afternoon the outside walls of the room felt warm and in some places were condensing moisture.  I measured the difference between the return air coming up the chases of the building vs. air temperature entering the fans and there was a 10 degree rise! Bottom line is we had massive outside air leaking into the mechanical room from the perimeter walls of the room built by the General Contractor.  They were not happy campers when I asked them to tear down the walls and rebuild the walls, but it made a massive difference in the performance and operating costs of the system.  I have always wondered what the real impact of air infiltration has on the typical high rise office building with “above the ceiling open return air” and typical perimeter glazing?

IAQ Testing

There is many ways to test the indoor air quality of a home or office.  The real question is do you offer it?  Last fall we started offering AirAdvice tests to our service agreement customers for free.  Having a detailed report showing Particulates, VOC’s, temperature and humidity in a report that the customer can understand can have a huge impact on closing ratios and average revenue per sales lead. These tests can also help determine issues with the structure that HVAC Contractors typically get blamed for, including high humidity and hot/cold spots.

Our high efficiency air filter, duct sealing, thermostat replacement, duct upgrades, and zone damper system sales have all increased.  To be honest, it has made a big difference for us in a year where sales were not driven by temperature.

In closing, I hope at least some portion of this message has given you some ideas on how to stay productive as we approach the cooler months.  I hope each of you have found a way to meet your goals this summer and have a game plan in place to stay busy doing profitable work this fall/winter.

It’s hard to believe fall is almost around the corner.  In just a few months we will have our Santa’s Helper fund raiser at 4-Day Weekend.  I hope you can join us for a fun filled evening.

Plano Airconditioning and Heating Company Total Air and Heat, is owned by Steve Lauten, the second generation owner.  Founded in 1957 by Steve’s dad, Fred Lauten, Total Air and Heat is proud to have received some of the highest awards for quality and service that are offered in the Industry. Among those awards are the Readers Choice Awards from the Collin County Newspaper, the Trane Pacesetter Award in 2002, and designation as a Trane Comfort Specialist.